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Emergent BioSolutions, feds terminate long-running pandemic preparedness contract

Emergent BioSolutions Inc. and the Department of Health and Human Services have terminated a pandemic preparedness contract the Gaithersburg company has held since 2012.

Emergent (NYSE: EBS) said it reached “a mutual agreement” to terminate a contract that established a public-private partnership for pandemic preparedness and designated the company’s Baltimore manufacturing facility as a Center for Innovation and Advanced Development and Manufacturing (CIADM). The termination includes “all associated task orders, including the 2020 task order to reserve capacity and expand manufacturing for third-party Covid-19 vaccine and therapeutic candidates,” the company announced Thursday after the closing bell as part of its third-quarter earnings disclosures.

The contract termination means that Emergent will lose out on approximately $180 million in value from the 2020 Covid task order — work the company says was slated to end at the end of 2021 anyway — and a little more than $22 million…

Read the full story from the Washington Business Journal.

School bus emergency? Fairfax County students have a plan to handle it

This story is part of WTOP’s 2026 Back to School coverage. The wheels on the bus will soon be going round and round again in Fairfax County, Virginia, and some of its young riders are learning what to do if there’s an emergency on the way to school. The annual Safety Patrol Training Camp, hosted by Fairfax County Public Schools' Office of Transportation Services, combined hands-on exercises with classroom lessons to teach students how to keep calm during emergencies on buses. The training can feel remarkably realistic, with overturned school buses on their side or completely upside down in the middle of the county bus depot. Other buses, right side up, fill with smoke that is water-based but mimics the intensity of a bus overheating.
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